Last volume kicked off the Duelist Kingdom Tournament Arc when Pegasus issued Yugi a sinister summons. Demanding he participate in his grandiose private tournament, the sinister creator of Duel Monsters now holds Yugi's grandfather's soul hostage to ensure his good behavior. Quite the cheerful setup already, but the manga’s version of the storyline is a lot darker than its animated English-language counterpart. 

Yugi’s not the only one with something important on the line. Jonouchi needs the tournament’s prize money to save his sister Shizuka's eyesight, Bakura seeks greater knowledge of the Millennium Items and Kaiba stands to lose his pride, brother and company if Pegasus or any of his goons defeat Yugi before he does. Yeesh, those are big stakes! I just enter Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments for the pleasure of getting torpedoed straight out of the ring by a smug ten-year-old and his Final Countdown Deck. I suspect that I'm just not tournamenting right.

There are some fun character moments along the way too. Mai drops her sexy harpy-queen persona once Team Yugi reminds her that having friends is pretty darn great, Jonouchi stops relying on Yugi for help, and even Kaiba starts showing his a softer side. Okay, so that’s “softer” in the same way that granite is “softer” than diamond. Still, progress is progress, I guess... We also get a formal introduction to Bandit Keith, yet another duelist with a grudge against Pegasus.

Here's the thing, though: this manga is downright surreal if you were first exposed to Yu-Gi-Oh! through the 4Kids dub. Heck, 4Kids wasn't even the first company to soften things...the anime itself dropped and/or changed several scenes and plotlines to take the edges off. By comparison, the edges-and-all manga's tone belongs in the darker end of the shonen genre spectrum. Y'know, what with the language, violence and murder.

Let's go back to Bandit Keith. The guy's a total potty mouth! Not that he was a gent in the English anime, but here he lays cusses out on all of his opponents right from the get-go. And he's not the only one to get in some less-than-G-rated disses either—Mai, Ryuzaki and Jonouchi contribute their own strings of censorship punctuation marks when the mood strikes them.

In general, many of the characters are...less nice. A lot less nice. Kaiba, for instance, kills several of his would-be assassins on and off-panel. At one point, he even uses a rare card to block a gun's hammer before he grabs said gun hard enough to break the poor schmuck's finger.

Then there's this other lovely duel where Yugi tries to save Mai's Star Chips from one of Pegasus' “Player Killers” by wagering his own life on the outcome. Unfazed by the prospect of committing first-degree murder, the thug accepts Yugi's offer and lassos his neck with a garrote wire. You read that right: Pegasus has authorized his henchmen to use garrote wires while catching fleeing duelists. Yikes.

Yu-Gi-Oh!'s shift in focus to Duel Monsters marked a lighter tone for both the story and for Yugi, who seems to have lost his taste for setting convicts on fire. (Check out the first volume–it is awesome!) Don’t think that means the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! stopped being a dark place though, there's plenty of stuff that is manga-only territory. If you've only seen the anime, you're missing out on a huge part of the overall experience. I highly recommend these 3-in-1s as a cheap way to read Kazuki Takahashi's original story. 

You can experience a slightly darker version of Yu-Gi-Oh! by getting the 3-in-1's right here! 

by Chris Turner